Five Artists to Watch in 2022

Among the many artists who caught our attention at art fairs and exhibitions last year, we share some of the practices we are excited to follow in 2022.

Alyina Zaidi

Born in 1995, Alyina Zaidi is a London-based artist who completed her MFA in Painting from London’s prestigious Royal College of Art in 2021.

Constructing elaborate dream-like scenes, Zaidi’s expansive fictional landscapes draw on the memories she has growing up between New Delhi and Srinagar.

In April 2022, Zaidi’s work will be included in a group exhibition at Newchild Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium.

Joseph Yaeger

We first came across Joseph Yaeger’s evocative close-ups at Project Native Informant during London Gallery Weekend last year.

Upon graduating from London’s Royal College of Art in 2019, Yaeger took part in a three-month residency at the newly established V.O Curations before being taken on by Project Native Informant, where he has since had two sell-out shows in 2020 and 2021.

Mohammed Sami

Mohammed Sami’s semi-abstract paintings recall his experiences of conflict growing up in Iraq.

Following the Hayward Gallery’s heralded group show Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Modern Art, who presented his work at Frieze London last year, will host a debut solo exhibition of his work in 2022.

Sami’s work will also feature in The London Open, the triennial exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery in the summer.

Kristy M Chan

We came upon Kristy M Chan’s work at the recently opened gallery, The Artist Room in London, where the artist’s current solo exhibition opened in December.

Born in 1997 in Hong Kong, Chan recently graduated in 2020 with an MA in Contemporary Art from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Since, she has presented work in solo and group exhibitions in Europe and Hong Kong.

Working with oil and oil stick, Chan’s dizzying compositions of vivid fuschia, sapphire, and emerald hues explore the abstract realms of emotions and dreams in a process she has coined ‘irrational conversion’.

Amani Lewis

Amani Lewis’s work stuck with us while doing the rounds at Art Basel Miami Beach in December.

In Miami, Lewis presented two works with Salon 94 featuring hyper-saturated figurative compositions of their family and Baltimore community. Sourced from photo albums and video recordings, Lewis’s works interrogate representations of Blackness in the media.

Based between Baltimore and Miami, Lewis had a solo exhibition towards the end of last year at Salon 94. Their inaugural exhibition at Pittsburgh-based gallery ALMA|LEWIS is running until 22 January.

Main image: Alyina Zaidi, Planisphere (2021). Acrylic on canvas. 141 x 183 cm. Courtesy the artist and indigo+madder.